Thursday, December 31, 2015

Here’s is the continuation of Part 1 of the JazzProfiles retrospective review of the Ken Burns PBS television series Jazz which will run consecutively as Parts 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D. I have broken down Part 1 into four segments to make it more manageable for me to develop into postings and to make it easier for the reader to absorb the writer’s arguments about the series.

There will also be a Part 2 and a Part 3 to Ken Burns Jazz - A Retrospective Review and these will also be divided into segments and run consecutively on the blog]

Two of the most interesting pieces about the Ken Burns series on Jazz were written for the Columbus Dispatch by S.R.B. Iyer, of whom you may never have never heard. Bala Iyer was born in Coimbatore, India. He studied economics in Delhi, moved to the U.S. in 1981 to work on a doctorate, and studied English literature at Purdue and Ohio State universities. He wrote two pieces about Jazz, the first an interview, the second a review.

In order to avoid confusion about who is being heard in this and in other pieces I will quote, I have placed in bold face and italics, the byline at both the beginning and the end of the commentary.

By S.R.B. Iyer

One

Ken Burns, the television documentarian, was asked recently to reflect on American indifference to the past.

He was in Walpole, New Hampshire.

"It comes," he said over the telephone, "from the relative youth of the country. I live here in a village, one of the oldest on this continent. And yet there were Indians here 225 years ago, killing off the first white people. So, you know, it's a very, very young country. The response to the Civil War (series) was flabbergasting, not just for me, but for the rest of the country, because we suddenly realized we had a past and wanted to have one ...."

His new documentary series, Jazz, is the final installment of his "trilogy on American life." Burns says he began his Civil War television series without any idea that he was embarking on such a long project. But the pattern of American history made his trilogy inevitable. The Civil War, he says, quoting Shelby Foote, "defined us." Baseball (his television series and the game) "helps us understand what we had become." Jazz (the music, and possibly his series as well) is "a very accurate witness of the twentieth century" and "suggests some sense of what we might become." This is because "the model of jazz is so democratic, is so without barriers, so utterly American."

Burns has been listening seriously to jazz for about six years. And in all his pronouncements on the subject, one hears the fervor of a recent convert. He acknowledges, when pressed, the irony that he has discovered jazz during what is widely agreed to be one of its most fallow periods. However, he feels that this is a superficial view.

"Jazz isn't as popular as it used to be, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a vital art form. Witness Citizen Kane, the greatest film of all time: a huge box-office disappointment when it first came out. Van Gogh was essentially a suicide. Today his paintings sell for more than anyone else's on earth."

Some Americans feel that jazz is old-fashioned, he says. Others think "it has an esoteric dimension." They think that to understand it, they "need advanced degrees." This "is an unfortunate consequence of a jazz community that is consistently fighting and bickering with itself." Burns has made Jazz to dispel all these misconceptions. He is confident "that after 25 years of experience, that the sorts of things that I have done have sort of hit the Zeitgeist of my country quite accurately at times."

He says that the good news about jazz has spread all over the world. Its appeal is universal. He visited the president at the White House not long ago. "We stayed up all night listening to jazz. He told me about meeting a saxophone player in Russia. The president is a huge jazz aficionado. He said that when this guy was on, "it was as good as anything I have heard."

One gets the sense that Burns is exasperated by "the jazz community" even as he is preparing to carry the gospel of jazz to millions of American television viewers. He complains that his documentary has already been criticized by members of this "contentious" tribe for omissions, misplaced emphases, etc.

When this subject is raised, he becomes declamatory, even ecstatic.

"My story," he says, "is much larger. I'm a very controlling and in-control film maker. Nobody is going to arrest my agenda. And my agenda is to tell a compelling national narrative to my countrymen, in the most compelling way I can, filled with the undertow of contradiction and irony that attends any manifestation in this universe and to eschew the kind of simplistic philosophical, dialectical, or political solutions that criticism often applies to things. I'd rather deal with a complex relationship to minstrelsy, a complex relationship to race in the early white practitioners of jazz, to drugs, to war and things like that. And I think the film has done it and done it magnificently."

Jazz also "parses the question of race in America." Burns says that "the greatest poetic justice that I have ever come across is the fact that the only art form Americans have created was born out of the community that has experienced a lack of freedom in a supposedly free land."

Asked how the series ends, Bums says, "We quite consciously turned the spigot of our narrative off about '75." He made this decision not out of fear — "I have been fearless about the other aspects in all the episodes" — but because he "is in the business of history" and prefers to "deal with the past."

He is happy to leave the present to "reviewers, critics, journalists."”

Two

“To enjoy (this) documentary series, it is helpful, if not essential, to know as little as possible about jazz. If one knows very little — absolute ignorance is ideal — about the history of this country in the twentieth century, one might be Burns's perfect audience.

Burns's basic assumption is breath takingly simple-minded: jazz reflects, at every stage of its evolution, the social, cultural, and political circumstances of the period. It has been a running commentary on American life. We are told, for instance, that Louis Armstrong's monumental West End Blues, recorded in 1928, was "a reflection of the country in the moments before the Great Depression." How a piece of music does this is not made clear. One might wonder then whether Charlie Parker's Cool Blues is a vote for or against Keynesian economics.

Three elements in Jazz compete for the viewer's attention: the script, the music, and the pictures on the screen. The pictures — still photographs, documentary footage, clips of musicians — are superb. The music, some curious choices notwithstanding, is often as good. But both pictures and music are overwhelmed by the sheer badness of the script.

The script is everything good jazz isn't: sentimental, solemn, melodramatic, and deficient in both humor and subtlety. It is oppressively defensive. It is sanctimonious and self-important. Crammed with superlatives, it often seems less history than advertisement.

Structurally, Jazz is both repetitious and unimaginative. A musician, say Sidney Bechet, is introduced. His social-political-historical context is established with period photographs, documentary footage, and the testimony of experts and contemporaries. Sometimes the order is reversed. Wynton Marsalis then reassures us of this person's worthiness. The process isn't complete without this intrusion by Marsalis.

In Sidney Bechet's case, could we not have heard instead from the soprano saxophonist Bob Wilber? He knew Bechet; he was a student of Bechet's in the late '40s; he played with Bechet. He is alive; and he speaks English.

Burns seems to have learnt about jazz from Stanley Crouch, Albert Murray, and Wynton Marsalis. The ideological tilt of the film is recognizably theirs. Those who follow jazz might wonder at the experts Burns has chosen. Fortunately Gary Giddins is among them. He is vivid, funny and memorable; and especially eloquent on Armstrong and Parker.

Gerald Early, who is heard from at great length, is at the other end on the spectrum of eloquence. Early is Burns's expert on race. His commitment to opaque generalization is total: "Jazz seemed so much to capture the absurdity of the modern world." "Jazz is a kind of lyricism about the great American promise and our inability to live up to it in some ways." Etc. He opines that Miles Davis "had decided he was going to be the ultimate Walt Whitman," but the description of Davis's Whitmanesque trumpet style is beyond him. "It was a kind of piercing sort of sound," he offers. "It was piercing and mellow at the same time."

The story of jazz, in Ken Burns's narrative, is essentially the story of four or five representative figures. Louis Armstrong -— the Shakespeare, Bach and Dante of American music (Gary Giddins) — is unknowable. Duke Ellington, "the greatest American composer," is presented as something of an exemplary figure. Charlie Parker is the jazz martyr, undone by drugs, drinks, and "inner demons." Benny Goodman, a lesser musician, is an expert popularizer, the white face of jazz. Miles Davis epitomizes black militancy.

In addition to these suns, a number of satellites arc considered in passing. They are chosen to illustrate some socio-cultural point.

The naive jazz lover, expecting to see his heroes celebrated, will get some nasty shocks. The treatment of Benny Carter, for instance. Carter was, with the exception of Johnny Hodges, the finest alto saxophonist before Charlie Parker and is, perhaps, the most versatile musician to grace jazz. Besides the alto saxophone, he has been recorded playing the clarinet, piano, trombone, the tenor and soprano saxophones, and he is a brilliant trumpeter. Carter was a fine bandleader and one of the most influential composers and arrangers in the history of jazz. Unfortunately, his importance is merely musical, and he is therefore not usable by Burns. He doesn't rate even a moment's consideration.

The parochialism of Jazz is another surprise. "Utterly American," a "uniquely American music." Jazz is undoubtedly all of that. But, almost from the beginning, it has had a passionate following outside the United States. The importance to jazz of the French writers Hugues Panassie and Charles Delaunay — as critics, record producers, magazine editors, and discographers — cannot be emphasized too strongly. There arc large jazz festivals every year in France, Wales, England, Canada, Switzerland, Japan, and other countries. The working American jazz musician understands the importance of all this, even if Burns and Co. don't.

When Louis Armstrong died, in 1971, Philip Larkin wrote that he had been "something inexhaustible and unchanging like the sun," that he was "an artist of world stature, an American Negro slum child who spoke to the heart of Greenlander and Japanese alike." The universality of jazz is a miraculous achievement. It should be one of the themes of a documentary like Burns's. It isn't. And perhaps, understandably. For it would have meant examining those qualities of jazz — musical and emotional — that resist simple sociological interpretation.

Philip Larkin wrote in his poem For Sidney Bechet: "On me your voice falls as they say love should / Like an enormous yes."

While suffering through the epic dreariness of Ken Burns's story, I found myself, all too often, entertaining feelings of an altogether different sort.”

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

"Ken Burns's Jazz isn't jazz; it's politics and ideology — at times one is tempted to say racism — masquerading as history and sociology."

- Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

“Three elements in Jazz compete for the viewer's attention: the script, the music, and the pictures on the screen. The pictures — still photographs, documentary footage, clips of musicians — are superb. The music, some curious choices notwithstanding, is often as good. But both pictures and music are overwhelmed by the sheer badness of the script.

The script is everything good jazz isn't: sentimental, solemn, melodramatic, and deficient in both humor and subtlety. It is oppressively defensive. It is sanctimonious and self-important. Crammed with superlatives, it often seems less history than advertisement.”

- S.R.B Iyer, The Columbus Dispatch

“... [Jazz] depended almost entirely on the vision of jazz shared by the Holy Trinity - Wynton Marsalis and his mentors Stanley Crouch and Albert Murray.”

- Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker

“... [Ken Burns’ Jazz] … is a vigorous exercise in political correctness, a distortion of cultural history that only deepens racial division while ill-serving the music it sets out to celebrate. Even more dispiriting is the fact that Ken Burns passed up a genuine opportunity to showcase one of the only organically and expansively multi-cultural movements in American history — the evolution of jazz.”

- Diana West, The Washington Times

If you want to stir up a controversy among Jazz fans, do a retrospective about the music and you will be certain to hear from someone about who and what you left out of it.

On the other hand, the tendentious, prepossessed and misrepresented supposed documentary on the subject of Jazz produced by Ken Burns deserves to be skewered for both what is was and what it wasn’t.

If you doubt the “wisdom” in this statement read the following essays and correspondence by Gene Lees, S.R.B Dyer, Diana West and Robert Parker, all of which will appear in a four-part consecutive posting on JazzProfiles.

Here is Part 1A.

Ken Burns Jazz — to the Ground

Part One

March 2001 edition of the Jazzletter

“Any way you look at it, the Ken Burns PBS series titled Jazz is, if not the biggest thing ever to happen to this music, one of the biggest. It was widely publicized and ubiquitously advertised with funds from General Motors, occasionally received tepid praise, usually in the conventional jazz magazines — extensive beneficiaries of its ad budget — and was everywhere excoriated by critics and musicians alike. It depended almost entirely on the vision of jazz shared by Wynton Marsalis and his mentors Stanley Crouch and Albert Murray. These three — the Holy Trinity, as James T. Maher and Whitney Balliett have called them — were among the series' main talking heads, endlessly drilling one singular vision of ethnic exclusion. But whatever one thought of the series, it was big, in physical size (ten broadcasts totaling nineteen hours), in the scope of the publicity expended on it, size of its budget (publicly said to be five million dollars but according to some reports the real figure was twenty million), and range of its impact. In a pre-broadcast story published in its Arts and Leisure section on Sunday, January 7, the New York Times expended four full pages on the subject. More on that later. Two days earlier, on January 5, the Christian Science Monitor, which has far less space to play with, gave it almost two full pages.

The January 31 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle reported that on the average, 10.3 million Americans per night watched its episodes. How many saw the full nineteen hours of it was not stated, but the paper did report that the series averaged a 3.6 national rating.

"The series also is having a dramatic impact at record stores and online outlets, where sales of CDs with the Burns imprint are soaring," the Chronicle reported. A group of CDs produced in a cooperative arrangement between Sony and Verve bore a broad yellow banner on the cover saying Ken Burns Jazz. "Three of them," the paper continued, "are on Billboard's top 200 albums chart — it's unprecedented for that many jazz discs to hit the paper's charts — including the 5-CD box Ken Burns Jazz: The Story of America's Music."

But how accurate are the polls? Christopher Kitchens of Vanity Fair is ardently skeptical of political polls. During his lectures, sometimes to as many as three thousand persons, he asks that whoever has been polled hold up a hand. No one, he says, ever does. Then he asks if anybody knows anyone who has been polled. No one ever does. And I don't know anyone (do you?) who has ever been polled about television, including whether he or she watched Jazz. .

On February 5, Jonathan Yardley wrote in the Washington Post:

"The tempest stirred by Jazz, the ten-part series that finally (mercifully) ground to its conclusion last week, may be boiling in a teapot. As one of my occasional correspondents wrote, 'No one I work with watched it. No one in my family watched it.' It was pretty much the same here, too: Only a handful of my fellow workers seem to have paid much attention to it, and even the person in my family who is most passionate about music caught only glimpses of it.

"So the avalanche of e-mail that has tumbled into my inbox since I wrote about the PBS series three weeks ago may be misleading. The only people who really care about Jazz may be die-hard aficionados — whose numbers, as is well known, are lamentably small — and others keenly attuned to the subtlest nuances of race relations in the United States. The rest of the country — I'd guess something on the order of 275 million souls — seems to have been blissfully unaware of the series; given the distortions, omissions, and fabrications with which it was riddled, doubtless that is for the best."

Yardley's review appeared in the Post January 15. He said of the earlier Burns epic, The Civil War, that "it is undeniably powerful, if overlong and emotionally manipulative. For this work he has been praised, and he seems to have come to believe his own press clippings. Not merely is he content to recycle all the formulas that were once fresh but are now exhausted, he has assumed a self-aggrandizing near-messianic pose. Thus we have various films (about Congress, the Statue of Liberty and so forth) presented as aspects of "Ken Burns's America," and now we have Ken Burns's Jazz.

Yardley, in common with many other writers, notes that Burns focuses almost entirely on a few dead giants, while ignoring many major later figures. This, he says, "may be good news for record companies that can repackage their backlists at minimal expense" but "it so obsessively places race at the center of the tale that it manages to politicize jazz in ways that would have deeply offended, say, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and that surely will offend many potential converts, whatever their own race may be.

"Ken Burns's Jazz isn't jazz; it's politics and ideology — at times one is tempted to say racism — masquerading as history and sociology."

This, he noted in the piece that followed three weeks later, "sat well with some readers (mostly white) who were angered by the gratuitous slights inflicted by Ken Burns et al on even the finest white jazz musicians, but poorly with others (mostly black), who argued that, as one reader put it, 'jazz may be color-blind but the musicians and society in which they live and play definitely [are] not.'"

Yardley notes that the series, while never claiming that black musicians had "natural rhythm," nonetheless came close to the Noble Savage idea of the past: "Marsalis wouldn't say that blacks musicians are 'savage' — quite to the contrary — but that their blackness affords them, ex post facto, a 'nobility' that white musicians cannot hope to attain. This was a leitmotif in Jazz from beginning to end. Indeed the series ended with a shameless glorification of Marsalis himself as savior of jazz — and it did far more to widen the racial divisions among jazz musicians than to narrow them."

A number of writers observed that Burns acted and spoke, in interviews, as if he had personally invented the art. Jelly Roll Morton also claimed to have invented it. Comment on this extended, confused, and ponderous television series has been flowing to me in a stream, or perhaps I should say scream. And although I had vowed never to say another word about Marsalis, who once was a very good trumpet player and lost it, such is the uproar (I have never seen anything like it) that I have no choice but to organize an extended survey of reaction.

The critics were universally dismissive — all those I read, in any case — and musicians were frequently furious. Some of the best writing, as so often is the case, was that in the New Yorker by Whitney Balliett, who said that some of the interviews are invaluable, but noted:

“Many first-rate musicians are tapped only in passing or are ignored altogether. Those who are mentioned briefly, then left on the cutting-room floor, include Charles Mingus, a great bassist and a wildly original composer and bandleader; the Modern Jazz Quartet, for forty years the most lyrical and swinging of jazz chamber groups; and the seminal pianists Earl Hines, Bud Powell, and Bill Evans, who, taken together, invented modern jazz piano.

There are more: Pee Wee Russell, an endlessly original and lyrical clarinetist; the trombonists Vic Dickenson and Jimmy Knepper, utterly different but both inimitable and ceaselessly inventive; Jim Hall, Charlie Christian's successor; and the cornetist Bobby Hackett, whose solo on Glenn Miller's A String of Pearls belongs with Armstrong's baroque edifice on West End Blues.”

I thought the Civil War series Burns did was good, though lugubrious and not up to the level of the wanton ecstatic praise it received. For one thing the use of music in that series should have alerted me to Burns' insensitivity to this art, a country-fiddle dirge endlessly repeated and played, as it turns out, by Matt Glaser, of whom more later on. But it was time someone did a protracted documentary on jazz, and, when someone on Burns' staff contacted me, I agreed to an interview. I gave the Burns people a day of my time, including two or three hours on camera.

Ah, and then I made a fatal error: I told the young woman conducting the interview that if they wanted to have a good series, they should not allow Wynton Marsalis too much say in it. With cool dishonesty, she neglected to tell me he was "senior artistic adviser" on the project, and had been from the beginning. Indeed, he suggested the project to Ken Burns. Had I been told this in advance, I would never have assented to the interview, and had I been so advised after the interview, I would never have signed the release form. It was inevitable that I would end up on the cutting room floor.

All you see of me in the series is a brief segment in which I seem to trash Cecil Taylor. I say that he had a perfect right to do whatever he wants musically and I (meaning anybody) had a perfect right to listen to something else. The fact is that I have a lot of respect for Cecil Taylor, and I mentioned him in a larger context of the dilemma facing all music at the end of the twentieth century, the restrictions of tonal music and the theme and variations form and the loss of audience for those who break out of them. But Wynton Marsalis doesn't like Cecil Taylor, and he doesn't like me, either. "That Gene Lees," he told Chip Deffaa, "he's pathetic." And so, he and Burns apparently thought, they could kill two birds with one comment, and thus he used me as a weapon to hurt Cecil Taylor. If anybody reading this knows Cecil Taylor, please convey this to him.

Far more significant than my excision was the omission of Benny Carter. I remember telling the young woman that the one man she must interview was Benny Carter, for he is the only still-active jazz musician whose career was coeval with that of Louis Armstrong: Armstrong was bom in 1901, Carter in 1907. More to the point, Benny Carter is one of the massively significant jazz musicians. Phil Woods (who also isn't in the series) asserted,"My inspirations were Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, and Charlie Parker — in that order."

Carter is seen briefly in a background shot, and there is no serious treatment of him as the major artist he is. I believe he is mentioned twice, the second time only in a list of bandleaders who broke up their groups at the end of 1946. I called him to ask, "Did they interview you?"

"Yes. I guess they didn't like what I said."

John Clayton, the bassist, composer, arranger, and bandleader had a similar experience. In an interview with Don Heckman of the Los Angeles Times, he expressed the hope that the series will accomplished something positive, but said he was dismayed at Carter's almost total absence from the history

"I was outraged by that," Jon said. "When I asked Benny why he hadn't been interviewed for the show, he said, 'I was.' And when I asked him why material from this interview wasn't included, he said, 'I guess they didn't like what I said.'"

The question is: What did they ask? Knowing Benny as well as I do, I doubt that we will ever know.

Bassist John Heard was equally incensed at the exclusion of Nat Cole. Cole was beyond question one of the most influential pianists in jazz history. Horace Silver has attested to his influence on his own work. So have Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans, and if you want to extend out from these three to all those they in turn influenced, the length of the man's shadow is astounding, not to mention his own superb, haunting playing. But Cole is not mentioned at all.

Marsalis, who is ubiquitous in the series, sometimes illustrates a point by playing his trumpet. He can, it is said, like Clark Terry and the late Harry Carney, do the trick of rotary breathing, which permits one to inhale through the nose while maintaining pressure in the embouchure with the air in the mouth and thus sustaining the melodic line without a break. Marsalis seems to have gone further: he has mastered the trick of rotary speech: making the same points over and over in long, tortured, tautological and often nonsensical maunderings delivered into your face with a rebarbative condescension, his expression fixed in a perpetual slight snigger, his head shaking in almost orgasmic tremors of self-love. Had Burns simply cut some of the Marsalis redundancies, he might have had time for a few kind words about, well, Big Sid Catlett for one. Marsalis's defenders often say that he is good at teaching children. Teaching them what? His own blinkered view of jazz history? Or his mangled grammar? He referred to someone as "de most wisest sage."

Is that as opposed to the de most stupidest sage? How is it that his brother Branford (far the better musician) doesn't talk that way?

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Jim Eigo, the owner-operator of Jazz Promo Services, occasionally sends out review copies of recently released CDs/Downloads and there are a select number of these that I would like to bring to your attention because I enjoyed the music on them and thought they deserved the attention of a wider audience.

Media releases prepared by Jim usually accompany the demonstration copies and since I can rarely improve on them, I thought I would share them with you “as is” and also include some excerpts from the informative insert notes to each recording.

Jazz artists today are not supported by the attention and resources that the Jazz press and recording companies focused on previous generations of Jazz musicians.

Thank goodness, then, for the existence of educated and informed media services such as Jim’s outfit that help today’s Jazz players get the word out. They are media savvy and provide a broad communication and information platform which helps Jazz fans and Jazz musicians stay in touch with one another.

“Spring comes early In England. It comes, In fact, despite what the barometer says, in the last full month of Winter when Marlene VerPlanck arrives for her annual tour of the UK; around eighteen one-nighters spread evenly over thirty days and a dozen counties, allowing plenty of time to recharge the batteries. 2015 was somewhat different; seventeen gigs compressed into nineteen days, gruelling whichever way you look at it with only two days off but on the credit side it did leave a week for R&R which in this case is not an abbreviation of Rest & Relaxation but means Rehearsal and Recording of a new (her 24th) album backed by the trio who have been her principal support since 2009, John Pearce, piano, Paul Morgan, bass, Bobby Worth, drums, a trio par excellence, beyond excellent, in fact, as is Marlene herself, but until Peter Marc Roget lays a new Thesaurus on us I lack a superlative to trump excellent, all I do know is that these four cats left excellent dead in the water along with their salad days. On two of the twelve tracks they're augmented by the tenor of Andy Panayi, on a further two by his flute, and on a further five by the trombone of Mark Nightingale. On all twelve tracks the six pros were augmented, in a completely different meaning of the word, by me and in the interests of declaring an interest this is where I say that I have loved, admired, and respected the artistry of Ms VerPlanck since the day in 1979 when in the small record section of a now long defunct Doubleday's bookstore on 5th Avenue, Serendipity brokered an introduction that left his moment on the road to Damascus looking like a mere bagatelle.

So, what can I tell you.

The Mood I'm In is a typical VerPlanck album which means, as any of her fan-base will testify and new admirers will soon discover, a blend of acknowledged standards, a sprinkling of the neglected, forgotten, obscure, invariably the work of heavy hitters, plus a smattering of newer material by contemporary composers and lyricists.

This 24th album is no exception; you want contemporary? Choose track 5 where you'll find Ronny Whyte and John Bunch's Certain People, wonder as the trio in turn, first John, then Paul, then Bobby, elevate the art of accompaniment to a new dimension.

You want obscure? Try track 3 and listen as Paul's bass leads Marlene into the Bobby Troup Henry Mancini collaboration Free And Easy then plays tag with her up to the release before making way for Andy's liquid flute.

You want neglected? Step right this way and inhale Duke Ellington's It Shouldn't Happen To A Dream with a gorgeous solo from Mark.

You want forgotten? Here's the very thing, a Cahn-Van Heusen entry from 1962 that no one and his uncle Max remembers; but Marlene found Come On Strong and having found it she sings the bejesus out of it while Andy's tenor just about manages to keep up with her.

And now, you want standard? Boy, is this your lucky day. Close your eyes and wallow in Marlene's definitive interpretation, backed by just the trio, of one of the most gorgeous ballads of the twentieth century, Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane's Too Late Now. It was actually written at the mid-point of the twentieth century, 1951, for the MGM movie Royal Wedding where it was squandered on Jane Powell but looking on the bright side at least it wasn't Dick.

I could of course name-check all twelve tracks and come up with a superlative or three for each one but what the hey, ninety to ninety-five per cent of you holding this CD are repeaters, the loyal fan-base who know as well as I do that when it comes to interpreting the Great American Songbook and if it comes to that the lesser American Songbook Marlene not only wrote the book but also edited and published it and is so far ahead of the pack it isn't even funny.

On the other hand I would like to single out track 9 which is, in fact, a medley. The album was recorded in England in March, 2015, at the end of MVPs 26th annual UK tour and as most of you will know 2015 is Mr. Sinatra's centenary so for her own personal tribute Marlene linked a number he performed with Tommy Dorsey, It Started All Over Again with one he recorded on his own label, Reprise, some twenty years later, The Second Time Around. They were so well received on the tour that she decided to include them here because, let's face it, not everyone is able to get to a venue and hear her live.

And there you have it, a ballad or two, a bouncer or two; an in-betweener or two, like the man said, something for everyone.

Don't look now but that 'everyone' means you, so stop reading and start listening and keep in mind that if Marlene were a movie she'd be Casablanca. Better than that it doesn't get.

“At first thought, a guitar tribute to Frank Sinatra might seem to be something of a contradiction in terms. But just a few minutes into the extraordinary guitarist Lou Volpe's brilliant new album Remembering Ol' Blue Eyes (Songs of Sinatra), it will make perfect sense. Sinatra was known not only for his wonderful voice, but also for his absolutely impeccable phrasing and timing, and for his spectacular interpretive skills that made it sound as if every lyricist had written the song specifically for Frank to sing. He put aside his own virtuosity in order to make the song the center of attention to give it every fiber of his being as an artist. Each song was conceived and developed for its ideal presentation, like a fine jeweler perceiving the essence of the stone before shaping it to its perfect state.

So it is with Lou Volpe.

A virtuoso of consummate artistry, Lou is in masterful control of not only his instrument, but also the full vernacular of musical expression, distilled into a sound as distinctive and personal as the human voice. His playing "'sings" the song as if he was uttering the lyrics. Throughout this album, his phrasing is always perfectly shaped to the demands of the song and its lyrics, and never beholden to his personal style. As with Sinatra, that personal interpretation is entirely his, while still making the song the center of focus.

Lou's playing is spectacular throughout. Blazing single-note runs, riveting chordal playing, rich smears, edgy twang, swirling crescendos, filigreed delicacy, inventive call-and-response, and brilliant use of syncopation and suspension are all brought to the fore as needed to tell the fascinating and utterly enthralling stories that are not only contained in the lyrics, but within the singular artistry that is Lou Volpe. Virtuosic without question, but never for its own sake and always within the purest essence of the song and the tale it tells.

The 13 Sinatra classics - plus one very special dedication to him - are not arranged to replicate the Chairman's versions. Nonetheless, each song has been splendidly constructed in arrangement and production to respect and honor the unique manner in which Sinatra painstakingly crafted each of his own interpretations - and performed with the same emotive and captivating fervor.

Eight exceptional artists were selected to perform this music with Lou, assembled into various combinations specifically suited to the vision conceived for each song. These include Delmar Brown, Mel Davis and Onaje Allen Gumbs on keyboards; bassists Stanley Banks and Leo Traversa; Buddy Williams and Gary Fritz on drums and percussion respectively; with drummer Sipho Kunene offering his talents on one track. While their roles are essentially supportive to Lou's interpretive genius, the flawless musicality and loving care that they bring to every piece is breathtaking, as they make this music their own.

Appropriately, most of the songs selected are from the Great American Songbook, with a couple of more recent Sinatra hits as well. The later pieces include It Was A Very Good Year offered as a soul ballad -lilting, gentle and atmospheric, with some delicious fills by Onaje, and with Lou adding his own keyboard colorations. That's Life receives a gospel-ish treatment with Lou evoking Grant Green over a B3-flavored pastiche from Delmar.

The trio support of Davis, Banks and Williams is featured on three tracks. I’ll Remember April opens the album in wide-open cooker fashion, launched on a Coltrane-inspired rhythm with briskly walking bass and Williams shifting rhythms eloquently. A smoldering, dramatic groove is at play for A Foggy Day, from its Wes Montgomery/Barney Kessel inspired melodic statement to the spirited solo by Davis. Suspense is the operative word here, not only for its suspended rhythms but also for its thematic context. And Sinatra's quintessential late-night barroom classic One For My Baby is a funky soul blues with a hint of B.B. King on tap, all driven smoothly by Banks' dark blue pulse.

A delightful Brazilian feel with Samba/Bossa Nova flavoring spices four items, each greatly enhanced by the effervescent percussion of Gary Fritz. The Best Is Yet To Come is a mid-tempo percussive smoker, with Lou also on keyboards, contributing to its richly textured rhythmic core. The infectiously buoyant and joyful Speak Low contains some blazing single-note runs that would have made Johnny Smith smile. An evocatively shimmering version of You Go To My Head features some especially remarkable percussion interplay. I've Got You Under My Skin has some tantalizing behind-the-beat playing from Lou (who also plays bass), and the scintillating presence of Sipho Kunene on drums.

The playful I Get A Kick Out Of You is a rhythmically alluring jaunt that features some deliciously chordal Wes-like playing by Lou; and All The Things You Are is a scorcher, featuring Lou backed only by Leo's bass and Buddy's drums, and tearing off some explosive, vividly syncopated runs.

Three enchanting solo pieces round out this marvelous album, each with subtly effective and tasteful overdubbing that allows Lou to accompany and color his own leads. These include a vividly suspended and lovely version of Days Of Wine And Roses; and Softly As I Leave You, an exquisite, deeply touching ballad of beguiling intimacy. The final solo piece, which closes the album in poignant and emotionally powerful fashion is Carlos Santana's gorgeous Europa, subtitled by Lou (Dedicated to the Brilliance of Frank) - a majestic and luminous tour-de-force.

Romantic, danceable, uplifting and marvelously enjoyable, Lou Volpe's Remembering Ol' Blue Eyes (Songs of Sinatra) is an album that will be listened to over and over again.

“It's an amazing experience when, unexpectedly, a wish suddenly comes true. If it happens repeatedly, then that's just plain good luck. And so it began years ago when I started archiving the written music library of my father, Dr. Clare Fischer. I had hoped to find buried treasure in the stacks—material previously not seen or heard by others—that could be added to his public output. It has been one great find after another and it's still happening!

Getting most of the music he wanted to perform himself recorded, as opposed to leaving some for others to play, took right up until the end of his life. As with his final concerts, when he was recording, there was an absolute joy of spontaneity. Throughout his life, he felt that emotional content was always strongest during the first or second take so we always recorded that way, even if it meant minuscule imperfections were kept for the greater good of a heartfelt performance. I continue that practice today.

During the process of recording his original material, I almost lost sight of another important aspect of my dad's brilliance: his ability to re-develop the compositions of others into unmistakably personal statements that had the qualities of a new work while still retaining the character of the piece as it was known. I'm proud to present here a compendium of previously unreleased original material, different settings for some originals plus arrangements of great American, Latin and European standards.

The latest surprise came while in the middle of a busy schedule wrapping up this and a few other albums; Pluto and it's largest moon Charon came into view—out of the blue. I had to stop and look, filled with childhood memories of peeking through my dad's telescope at celestial bodies, always yearning for more detail. We shared our fascination with astronomy for decades, constantly delighting at new images sent from telescopes or spacecraft. We hope you'll explore these new recordings with that same sense of joy.”

- Brent Fischer

Track listing

1. Love's Walk 5:50 (Arr. Brent Fischer)

2. Tema do Boneco de Palha 4:25

(Theme Of The Straw Doll) (Brasil - Neto)

3. When You Wish Upon a Star / Someday My Prince Will Come 7:58

(Churchill - Marline - Morey - Washington)

4. Starbright 4:22

5. TWO for The Road 3:46 (Mancini)

6. Case of the Seven Waterfalls 6:26 (Maiheiros)

7. Out Of the Blue 4:31 Arr. Brent Fischer

8. Milbrae Walk 2:56

9. Amor Em Paz 3:18 (Jobim - Gilbert - De Moraes)

10. Squatty ROO 5:24 (Hodges)

11. Nuages 5:51 (Reinhardt)

12. Novelho 4:11

13. 49 4:21 (Larry Ford) Arr. Brent Fischer

14. Carnaval/A Felicidade/Samba De (Meu 8:00

(Bonfa - De Moraes - Jobim - Maria)

Musicians: Dr. Clare Fischer - Keyboards, composer, arranger Brent Fischer - Producer, arranger, all Percussion instruments, bass Peter Erskine - drums on Love's Walk, Starbright, Out of the blue, Nuages and 49, Mike Shapiro - drums on Tema do Boneco de Palha, Cascade of the seven Waterfalls, Millbrae Walk, and Carnaval/a Felicidade/Samba de Orpheu medley Denise Donatelli - Vocals on Out of the Blue John Proulx - Vocals on Out of the Blue

In solo, duo, trio and quartet settings, the Fischer's are joined by Peter Erskine and Michael Shapiro plus a special guest appearance by vocalists Denise Donatelli and John Proulx. Out of the Blue is out of this world!

Clare Fischer has often been thought of as being ahead of his time. His keyboard work on this album sets a new paradigm for 21st century jazz as the art form matures into its 2nd century. American, Latin and European standards mix perfectly with Fischer originals like the title song, which is heard here for the first time. Hundreds of years of music history are wrapped up neatly in each track—harmony, polyphony, thematic development, improvising and grooving in a timeless approach. Brent Fischer continues here what Ed Enright of Downbeat calls the "enduring legacy" of Clare Fischer: the culmination of an unusually wide array of influences into a singular sound.”

Phil Woods 5tet Feat. Tom Harrell - "Azure"

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Celebrating the Legacy of Art Farmer 1928-1999

This year will be the 90th Birthday Anniversary of Art Farmer. We are pleased to announce that The Art Farmer Website is now live. Please click on the image of Art to be re-directed to his site replete with discography.

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Bassist Chuck Israels on alto saxophonist Phil Woods

Quincy Jones had a band that was preparing to tour Europe in the summer of 1959. The band was rehearsing in the mezzanine of the Olympia Theatre and I somehow wrangled an invitation to attend a rehearsal. It was a great hand with some of Quincy's friends from Seattle, like Buddy Catlett and Patti Brown. Les Spann was the guitarist and played some flute solos. Sahib Shihab was in the saxophone section and Joe Harris played drums. I listened to a number of pieces in which there were solos played by various members of the band. It would be unfair to say that those solos were perfunctory, but later, when Phil Woods stood up from the lead alto chair to play his solo feature, the atmosphere changed. Phil played as if there were no tomorrow. The contrast was striking and I have always remembered the impression it left. If you practice rehearsing, then when the lime comes to perform, you are ready to rehearse. Phil practiced performing.

Legendary 1980 Weckl-Gadd-Colaiuta DRUM SHOWDOWN

Larry Bunker's Advice to a Young Drum Student

"Be yourself, keep good time, play musically and don't show off your "chops" [technique]. The only people who can appreciate them are other drummers, and nobody likes them anyway."

JazzProfiles Readers Forum

You have done a great service by reproducing this article. Gene really created a great portrait of Miller, especially with his new (for the time) interviews.

I was a great admirer of Gene's writing, and can say we were friends. If you like, I can send you a link to a memorial article I wrote for Doug Ramsey's blog Rifftides that I wrote after Gene died. He could be quite frustrating at times, but I learned a lot from him, and he definitely helped me to become a better writer.

Hi. I have been visiting his blog for a few months almost daily and I have to thank him for his work, contributing interesting articles about music and Jazz musicians which is helping me discover new things, to value others that I did not appreciate at the time and to recover some that I enjoyed. and I have forgotten. -Greetings and many thanks from Toledo Spain.

Great write up of one helluva release by Bill Lichtenauer of Tantara Productions. Magnificent list, great technology, and fantastic Kenton sounds. Thanks Steve...and thanks, Bill. And the liner notes were done superbly by Michael Sparke of the UK. Tony Agostinelli

Thanks Steven for making this available to a wider readership. This book was like a "bible" to me when I first started collecting aged 16. I still have my original copy ... complete with marginalia as I filled in my collection. I had to wait until I moved to London in 1958 to acquire many of these albums on the British labels like Esquire .... this brings back so many pleasant memories, but it also reminds me that time does proceed, relentlessly.

Garth.

This book was like a "bible" to me when I was a serious collector, aged 16 .... I still have my original copy, in excellent condition after all these years, over three continents complete with marginalia as I built my collection. Bravo to you Steve for making these early observations available for others to read. Raymond Horricks followed this book up with "These Jazzmen Of Our Time" (Gollancz, 1959), which contained some great early portraits by Herman Leonard.

I met him twice. He was playing at a mall with the Westchester jazz band. That was around 97 or so. They were taking a break and I started talking to him. He was super nice. I mention my grandfather was a jazz trumpet player Bunny Berigan. I did not know who Bill was but like the way he played bass that day. I ran across his book on jazz in the white plains library. I was surprise at knowledge and who he played with in jazz. I seen him again at the same place a year later and got to talk to him.Very nice again to me. I asked him about Zoot Sims. And about Benny Goodman which he your with in Russian . My grandfather played with Benny too at one time. Seems they both found him hard to deal with. What a fine man Bill is.

I discovered Oliver Nelson in 1977 and could not believe my ears. At the time it was obviously a vinyl record and belonged to somebody else. However, thanks to the technology of today I can listen to my cd of Blues and the Abstract Truth to my heart's content. You have told me so much more about this wonderful man's unique style. If I want to feel good, I just listen to Stolen Moments. Thank you.

I have been listening to 1 of greatest piece of orchestration of Stan Kenton style music I've ever listened too arranged by a young trumpet player & arranger Bill Mathieu it's Kenton it Mathieu but mostly a great music . the complexed overlays , blending , fitting in soloists at just the right moment , plus the swelling of the whole orchestra to create the Kenton sound without losing his own indemnity is outstanding . Thank Bill Thank you Stan ... Jim Shelton

Peter Haslund has left a new comment on your post "Mark Murphy: 1932-2015, R.I.P.":

Just discovered Mr. Murphy. Gotta say it leaves me speechless that I listened to jazz since the 80s and never once heard his name. All the stuff that sounded so contrived with Sinatra (who obviously knew he was really singing black people's music) is fresh and free with Mark. RIP.

Hi Steven,

I read with interest your recent piece about the Boss Brass. I live in Toronto, and when it comes to the Canadian jazz scene, it's hard to overstate how influential this band was. Besides the quality of McConnell's arrangements, the musicians were all top-name guys in the city (many with vigorous solo careers). What has always floored me about their playing is the tightness and especially intonation in the woodwinds -- the skill of the horn players at playing doubles (flutes and clarinets) is legendary.

I feel fortunate to have been able to hear them live, on a number of occasions. From the stories I've heard, either third-hand or right from former Boss Brass members, Rob was a really hard guy to work with, but certainly pushed his group toward excellence.

I also liked your recent piece on Pat Martino. I'm a big fan of his style. If you haven't read his autobiography, I highly recommend it! His personal story is, of course, fascinating and inspiring.

Speaking of guitarists, someone you may want to profile someday is the Canadian jazz guitarist Ed Bickert. He was the guitarist for the Boss Brass for many decades. He is now quite elderly and no longer playing, but is another of those guys who was phenomenally influential, though I think he largely flew under-the-radar south of the border.

Thanks for putting together such a great site, and best wishes.

Jordan Wosnick

You can share your thoughts, observations and general remarks in the Readers Forum by contacting JazzProfiles via scerra@roadrunner.com

Hi Steve...I'm not a Facebook or Twitter guy so here's hoping this email reaches you...

You indicated that you were not aware of published Mulligan biographies in your recent post on Gerry and I wanted to bring one to your attention that I think you will like:

JERU'S JOURNEY by Sanford Josephson. It was published in 2015 by Hal Leonard Books. It's part of the Hal Leonard Biography Series which also includes bios of Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Mann & Billy Eckstine.

I own the Adderley and Mann bios and also recommend them.

Jeru's Journey is an easy read and covers Mulligan's life from birth to his passing. It is a very good overview and the author--who knew Mulligan and interviewed him before his passing--tells Gerry's story completely including Mulligan's drug addiction, domestic (wives) issues, etc. along with good musical analysis and insights both of the author's and other musicians. In addition to a good discography there are many photographs.

The list price is $19.99. A good buy.

In closing, I would like to tell you how much I have enjoyed your blog over the years. I have recommended it to many musician friends and all have thanked me. Thanks again for helping to keep the jazz alive...

Bruce Armstrong

You can share your thoughts, observations and general remarks in the Readers Forum by contacting JazzProfiles via scerra@roadrunner.com

Les Koenig was clearly a GIANT despite his obvious preference to be low-key, himself. THANK YOU, Steven Cerra!!! The world is a better place because of people like Les! Like Laurie(Pepper) & the list goes on & on forever! Like YOU, Steven! Thanks to ALL who work behind the scenes, on or off-stage, etc. etc. etc... -in support of the featured "Player" & "Sidemen" so that "We the people..." can be out in the audience having the time of our lives enjoying "the show" or "Artistry, Talent, Efforts" and so on! My attitude is one of gratitude!! THIS art form & ALL original American Art forms must be preserved and encouraged to not only survive, but to thrive!!!

Diz

"Jazz is a gift. If you can hear it, you can have it."

Piano Players: Dick Katz on Erroll Garner

“Unique is an inadequate word to describe Erroll Garner. He was a musical phenomenon unlike any other. One of the most appealing performers in Jazz history, he influenced almost every pianist who played in his era, and even beyond. Self-taught, he could not read music, yet he did things that trained pianists could not play or even imagine. Garner was a one-man swing band, and indeed often acknowledged that his main inspiration was the big bands of the thirties – Duke, Basie, Lunceford, et al. He developed a self-sufficient, extremely full style that was characterized by a rock-steady left-hand that also sounded like a strumming rhythm guitar. Juxtaposed against this was a river of chordal or single note ideas, frequently stated in a lagging, behind-the-beat way that generated terrific swing.” [

Paul Desmond

Cannonball Adderley, who was at one point a rival of Paul's in the various polls and whose robust gospel-drenched playing was worlds apart once said: ‘He is a profoundly beautiful player.’ Writer Nat Hentoff said. "He could put you in a trance, catch you in memory and desire, make you forget the garlic and sapphires in the mud."

Drummers Corner: Larry Bunker on Shelly Manne

“In a truly formal sense, Shelly could barely play the drums. If you gave him a pair of sticks and a snare drum and had him play rudi­ments—an open and closed roll, paradiddles, and all that kind of thing—he didn't sound like much. He never had that kind of training and wasn't inter­ested in it. For him it was a matter of playing the drums with the music. He could play more music in four bars than almost anyone else. His drums sounded gorgeous. They recorded sensationally. All you had to hear was three or four bars and you knew it was Shelly Manne. - Larry Bunker, Jazz drummer and premier, studio percussionist

The 1954 Birdland Recordings of Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers

The 1954 Birdland recordings on Blue Note provided the stylistic foundation for the rest of Art Blakey's career. His style had completely crystallized. His pulsation was undeniable, a natural force; the counter-rhythms he brought to the mix made what he played that much more affecting. There was a purity about what he did—and always motion. He was spontaneous, free, creating every minute. That he was in the company of peers, all performing in an admirable manner, had a lot to do with making this "on-the-spot" session such an important musical document. The band never stops burning. The exhilarating Clifford Brown moves undaunted through material, fast, slow, in between, playing fantastic, well-phrased ideas that unfold in an unbroken stream. His technique, almost perfect; his sound, burnished. He's a gift to the senses. Lou Donaldson, an underrated alto player in the Bird tradition, offers much to think about while you're tapping your foot. Horace Silver is crucial to the effect of this music, much of it his own. Certainly the rhythms that inform his piano playing and writing make it all the more soulful. On this and other records he serves as a catalytic agent, provoking swing and engaging intensity. Hard-hitting, unpretentious, communicative, Silver has little use for compositional elements or piano techniques that impede his message. A live-in pulse permeates his music and his playing, strongly affecting the shape, content, and level of excitement of his performances and those of his colleagues. An original and tellingly economic amalgam of Parker, the blues, shuffling dance rhythms, and a taste of the black church for flavor, Silver is quite undeniable. Listen to his delightful "Quicksilver" on A Night at Birdland With the Art Blakey Quintet, Vol. 1 (Blue Note). It capsulizes what he does. On this album, Curly Russell shows once again he can play "up" tempos and interesting changes. He ties in well with Blakey. But Silver and Blakey, in combination, determine the rhythmic disposition of the music. Blakey's natural time and fire raise the heat to an explosive level before the listener realizes how hot the fire has become. Perhaps more than other recordings Blakey has made, the Birdland session documents his great strengths and technical failings. At almost every turn, he shows what an enviably well coordinated, buoyantly confident, rhythmically discerning player he is.

BOP AND DRUMS—A NEW WORLD

From the Introduction to Burt Korall, “Drummin’ Men: The Bebop Years”

“It is difficult for young musicians and jazz devotees to fully comprehend the tumultuous effect that the advent of bop had on drummers. The new music demanded new, relevant, trigger-fast, musical, well-placed reactions from the person behind the drum set—an entirely revamped view of time and rhythm, techniques, and musical attitudes.

How well did drummers deal with bop? The innovators, like Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, opened the path and showed how it was done. Young disciples—if they had talent, sensitivity, and the necessary instincts— caught on and made contributions. Other drummers stylistically modified the way they played, trying to combine the old with the new. This was tricky at best. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it was a matter of apples and oranges. Still others fought change and what it implied.

Not welcomed by many swing drummers and their more traditional predecessors, the new wave was looked upon as the enemy, sources of disruption and unnecessary noise. Those stuck in the past could not accept breaking time, using the drum set as both color resource and time center. The structural and emotional differences essential to bebop, the need for virtuosity, and the ability to think quickly and perform appropriately intimidated them. The demands of the music were strange and often devastating; a feeling of hostility built up in them. The basic reasons were quite clear. The new music could ultimately challenge their earning ability and position in the drum hierarchy."

Gerry Mulligan 1927-1996

“… Gerry Mulligan lived through almost the entire history of jazz. It is against that background that he should be understood.” – Gene Lees

Gunther Schuller on Sonny Rollins

“Rhythmically, Rollins is as imaginative and strong as in his melodic concepts. And why not? The two are really inseparable, or at least should be. In his recordings as well as during several evenings at Birdland recently [Fall/1958] Rollins indicated that he can probably take any rhythmic formation and make it swing. This ability enables him to run the gamut of extremes— from almost a whole chorus of non-syncopated quarter notes (which in other hands might be just naive and square but through Rollins' sense of humor and superb timing are transformed into a swinging line) to asymmetrical groupings of fives and sevens or between the-beat rhythms that defy notation. As for his imagination, it is prodigiously fertile. And indeed I can think of no better and more irrefutable proof of the fact that discipline and thought do not necessarily result in cold or un-swinging music than a typical Rollins performance. No one swings more (hard or gentle) and is more passionate in his musical expression than Sonny Rollins . It ultimately boils down to how much talent an artist has; the greater the demands of his art both emotionally and intellectually the greater the talent necessary.”

Artie Shaw on Louis Armstrong as told to Gene Lees

Artie said, "You are too young to know the impact Louis had in the 1920s," he said. "By the time you were old enough to appreciate Louis, you had been hearing those who derived from him. You cannot imagine how radical he was to all of us. Revolutionary. He defined not only how you play a trumpet solo but how you play a solo on any instrument. Had Louis Armstrong never lived, I suppose there would be a jazz, but it would be very different."

Pops

Bill Crow on Louis Amstrong

Louis Armstrong transformed jazz. He played with a strength and inventiveness that illuminated every jazz musician that heard his music. Louis was able to do things on the trumpet that had previously been considered impossible. His tone and range and phrasing became criteria by which other jazz musicians measured themselves. He established the basic vocabulary of jazz phrases, and his work became the foundation of every jazz musician who followed him.

Bassist Eddie Gomez on Pianist Bill Evans

“Bill's music is profoundly expressive. It is passionate, intellectual, and without pretense. Eleven years with his trio afforded me the opportunity to perform, record, travel, and most importantly learn. My development as an artist is largely due to his encouragement, support, and patience. He instilled confidence in me, while at the same time urging me to search for my own voice and for new ways to make the music vital and creative. And Bill believed that repertoire, both new and old, would organically flourish in repeated live performance. In fact, there were precious few rehearsals, even before recording sessions. … When Bill passed away late in 1980, it was clear that all of us in the jazz world had sustained a huge loss. I was shocked and saddened; in my heart I had always felt that some day there would be a reunion concert. Had I been able to look into a crystal ball and foresee his death, perhaps I might have stayed in the trio for a longer period. I still dream about one more set with Bill. He closes his eyes, turns his head to one side, and every heartfelt note seems etched and bathed in gold. How I miss that sound.”

John Coltrane on Stan Getz

Coltrane himself said of the mellifluous Stan Getz, "Let's face it--we'd all sound like that if we could."

Peter Bernstein on Bobby Hutcherson

I got to play with Bobby Hutcherson at Dizzy's a few years ago, which ended up on a CD [2012's Somewhere In The Night on Kind of Blue Records]. I was four feet away from him, thinking, "How is this man just hitting metal bars with wooden sticks with cotton on the end and making such an expressive statement?" The instrument is just like ... it's him! He's imbuing it with his thoughts and feelings. That's a miraculous thing. The instrument itself disappears when you're talking about a master on that level.

Ralph Bowen

“In a way, the entire act of music is mind put into sound. It has to go through some sort of physical medium in order to be heard. I chose the saxophone, but the whole issue is to have such control over the instrument and over what you hear that the instrument physically doesn't get in the way of visualizing sound. Technique to me means dealing with an instrument in the most efficient manner possible so that it's no more than peripheral to expression."